tsa line

ATLANTA — Regardless of politics or destination, American air travelers are unified by one desire: It’s time to pay Transportation Security Administration employees.

“Everybody got bills they have to pay, and it’s horrible,” said Patrice Clark, whose trip to Las Vegas began Saturday with a nearly four-hour wait in a security line at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. “Times are hard for everybody at this point. Working and not getting paid and gas prices are extremely high — like everybody needs their money. They need to pay them.”

TSA officers haven’t gotten a paycheck since the Department of Homeland Security partly shut down on Feb. 14. Democrats balked at funding the agency, demanding changes to immigration enforcement by federal agents after the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.

Some travelers arrive 4 hours early

Christian Childress is a private flight attendant, so when he is working, he doesn’t wait in TSA lines. But he frequently goes through a checkpoint when flying commercial to get to his job.

Childress, who lives in Redwood City in Northern California, said shutdown effects have been “hit or miss” thus far. He came to the Atlanta airport nearly three hours before his 1:30 p.m. Saturday flight to Nashville for a leisure trip. Some passengers have been arriving even earlier in Atlanta — the world’s busiest airport — worried about missing flights.

“Issue No. 1 should be paying the people who need to get paid and keeping our air travel system secure,” Childress said. “Then they can debate whatever they want to debate about Homeland Security.”

Democrats have tried to advance legislation to fund TSA separately, but Republicans have refused, saying funding for the entire Department of Homeland Security must be approved. So the shutdown continues.

Some passengers said it is time for Democrats to relent.

“I don’t want to go between the Democrats and the Republicans, but I think the Democrats are holding everything up because they can’t get their way,” said Tyrone Williams, a retiree from the Atlanta suburb of Ellenwood. He was queued up for screening before his flight to Philadelphia on Saturday.

Atlanta’s checkpoint wait time was as high as 90 minutes Saturday morning before melting away to nothing in the afternoon on what is typically one of the slowest days of the week for air travel. Staffing shortages have forced some airports to close checkpoints at times, with wait times swinging dramatically.

ICE at airports

Concerns about long airport lines are increasingly capturing attention.

President Trump has announced plans to order Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to take a role in airport security starting Monday, which he says will continue until Democrats agree to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

He said ICE agents would bring the administration’s immigration crackdown into the nation’s airports, arresting “all Illegal Immigrants” with a focus on those from Somalia.

“I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday, and have already told them to, “GET READY.” NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!” Trump wrote.

Funding for the whole department failed to advance in the Senate on Friday after Democrats declined to support a bill. On Saturday, in a rare weekend session, the GOP-led Senate rejected the Democrats’ motion to take up legislation to fund TSA.

Travelers ‘grateful’ for unpaid TSA workers

The vast majority of employees at TSA are considered essential, and roughly 50,000 continue to work without pay during the funding lapse. Nationwide on Thursday, about 10% of TSA officers missed work, the department reported. Absentee rates were two or three times higher in places.

Merissa Thomas arrived in Las Vegas on Saturday after a quick trip through a checkpoint at Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C.

“I’m so grateful for people who are willing to sacrifice a lot to make sure we’re safe,” Thomas said.

Union leaders and federal officials say TSA officers are under financial pressure. Airport screeners have spent nearly half of the last 172 days with paychecks delayed by politics — 43 days last fall during the longest government shutdown in history, four days earlier this year during a brief funding lapse, and now 37 days and counting during the current shutdown.

At least 376 officers have quit since this shutdown began, according to officials, exacerbating turnover at an agency that historically has had some of the U.S. government’s highest attrition and lowest employee morale.

“From now on I would drive wherever I have to go until they get this figured out,” said Clark, the delayed traveler. “It was horrible.”

Amy writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Collin Binkley in West Palm Beach, Fla., Ty O’Neil in Las Vegas and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.

What began as a social media post from President Trump on Saturday has grown quickly into a full-scale plan to deploy ICE agents to U.S. airports.

Amid a partial government shutdown, TSA lines have grown to be hours long at some U.S. airports, creating problems for travelers across the country. Call-out rates have started to increase at some airports, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said at least 376 TSA agents have quit since the partial shutdown began Feb. 14.

White House border advisor Tom Homan said that ICE plans to dispatch agents to airports as soon as Monday, and that he was working with other officials to determine where to send agents.

“It’s a work in progress,” Homan said during a Sunday appearance on CNN. “But we will be at the airports tomorrow helping TSA move those lines along.”

Homan stressed that ICE agents would provide support where possible, so that TSA staffers could better fulfill specialized positions.

“I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine, because they are not trained in that,” Homan said.

On Saturday, President Trump posted to social media, “If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before.”

The pushback to the White House plans was immediate.

Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security, released a statement that read, “Masked, armed police at travel checkpoints is a hallmark of dystopian movies. Now, Donald Trump is threatening to bring this tool of fascism to America. He is manufacturing chaos at airports for political leverage and trying to force Democrats to accept unaccountable secret police at security checkpoints around the country.”

Also speaking to CNN on Sunday, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said, “The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalize or, in some instances, kill them. We’ve already seen how ICE conducts itself.”

Representatives from Los Angeles International Airport did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for Orange County’s John Wayne Airport said she was not currently aware of any communication or Homeland Security guidance on the proposed plan.

A spokesperson for San Francisco International Airport said airport officials have not yet received anything specific from Homeland Security about a deployment of ICE agents. He said SFO security personnel are not part of TSA, and as a result, the airport has not had any checkpoint backups.